Robert Walpole

Jean-Baptiste van Loo's 1740 portrait of Robert Walpole at the National Portrait Gallery in London is one of two versions of this important commission, the other being at the Hermitage. Walpole was in the final years of his twenty-year dominance of British politics when van Loo painted him — he would fall from power in 1742. As the architect of the long Whig peace and the effective inventor of the modern prime ministerial role, Walpole had been the most powerful commoner in England for a generation. Van Loo's access to this commission demonstrates the extraordinary social ascent of a French painter who arrived in London in 1737 with an established European reputation and quickly secured the patronage of the highest political figures. The NPG portrait is a key document in British political iconography as well as Rococo portraiture.

Van Loo presents Walpole in a three-quarter format appropriate to state portraiture, with the Knight of the Garter insignia asserting his rank and royal favour. The handling is confident throughout: the face is rendered with psychological attentiveness and a hint of the shrewdness that contemporaries associated with Walpole, while the formal attire and ribbon of the Garter are treated with descriptive precision.